foodperson.com

It’s another dreary, gray and chilly day, and my pot of beans is simmering on the stove. The fragrance alone is enough to improve my mood. It turns out, however, that I am not going to be eating my beans and ham this evening. After soaking the beans, I realized I have other plans for dinner, but I’m cooking the beans anyway.

There’s good news in the delay: I will refrigerate the mixture overnight, assuming I can jam the pot in the fridge somehow, which will let accumulated fat solidify for easy removal. Although I trimmed all the fat I could and three-fourths of the meat from the ham bone, there will be plenty of fat in the pot, I know. If I were eating the beans and ham tonight. I would use my handy “gravy separator”-a pitcher whose spout draws from the bottom and leaves the floating fat inside the pitcher-but refrigeration will work better on my beans.

But I’ll remove more fat by refrigeration, I’m sure. Just another example of good things coming to those who wait. I found the following fat skimmers/separators, by the way, for those who are interested. One of these days soon I’m going to figure out how to make money from my recommendations!

• The Fatsoff Soup Scoup. I haven’t used one, but I think it’s an ingenious design that should work. If you’ve got one, let me know what you think.
• The separator pitcher. You can find two or three at Cooking.com and many other places, I’m sure. I recommend one of the glass ones, though, because the plastic or polycarbonate ones begin to crack over repeated use with very hot liquids.